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More Warning over Aerosol Climate Engineering

New research indicates that attempts to stop global warming through climate engineering will only cause “different” climate change compared to the current situation.

(Photo: Colourbox)

Written by Oda Eiken

A recent study by Jerry Tjiputra and colleagues at Uni Research and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research provides several reasons why deliberate climate fix, where you inject a large amount of aerosol particles to the sky in order to prevent global warming, should not be considered as a strategy to stop climate change.

- Climate engineering can have negative impact on the earth’s biosphere, Jerry Tjiputra explains. The study, which was recently published in the Journal for Geophysical Research, applies the state-of-the-art Earth system model NorESM to simulate artificial large-scale aerosol injections to the stratosphere to counteract the global warming.

Jerry Tjiputra, Uni Research Climate.

Deliberate climate fix is often considered as a feasible option to partially offset the future global warming, however the consequences and potential side effects of such attempts are widely debated.

Tjiputra explains that a rapid decrease in global temperatures through climate engineering can cause negative consequences for oceans, water cycle and land environments.

Their simulations indicate that a large change in precipitation patterns will occur which will alter the productivity of terrestrial vegetation.

In addition, ocean conveyor belt circulation will be affected, leading to a wide spread and acceleration of ocean acidification rate in the North Atlantic seafloor, which is an important area for many benthic habitats.

Since the deep ocean provides vital ecosystem services, such as fish stocks, this could introduce broader and long-term impacts on human welfare.